What does anyone here know about removing a partition from a hard drive?

I know that you better back up all the information on the partition first. I'm fairly certain it will wipe it clean if you do it. PaW?

I'm in the process of backing up everything on the "D" drive, but I've got a flash drive that apparently has something wrong with it because it keeps locking up in the middle of large files, or folders with large numbers of files in them. Really a PITA. I have to "safe remove" it, then plug it back in & re-open "My Computer" before resuming. Then it just does it again after a couple or a few more attempts at transferring files to it anyway.

So I'm just gonna buy another one.

Great news guys.... With the Air Hawk, flat balls are no longer a problem!!!

OK, I admit it. I did something stupid. I downloaded a virus/trogan to my computer yesterday. I thought it was a legit part of Windows Defender or something.

The thing is, I have Norton Anitvirus on my computer. It found the initial download after I already installed it, but was unable to identify and remove it after I installed it.

I looked on the web for some tips on removing it. The tip I found told me to remove "systemsecurity" files from the registry. Problem is, I did a whole registry search for "systemsecurity" yet nothing was found with that name.

So I went to my remove programs in the control panel. There was no "systemsecurity" there to remove.

So I went back into Norton to stop systemsecurity from starting up as a startup routine. There was no systemsecurity there either.However, I noticed a file that had the systemsecurity symbol on it called 12944594.

Norton was helpful in that it gave me the location of this file. It was in C:\Program Data. So I tried to delete the whole folder but it wouldn't let me because it said the file was in use. (this made sense because it kept popping up annoying fake warnings every 15 seconds)

So I told Norton to disable it from starting. I restarted my computer, and fortunately, that worked, it wasn't running.

I opened regedit. I searched and deleted every single file in the registry with 12944594 in it. Then I went back to C:\Program Data and deleted the whole folder containing 12944594.

It was a lot of work, but now I am free of it. However I am still annoyed that the extremely costly Norton Antivirus did not do it for me.

I had a brand new virus definition file installed minutes before and had done a registry scan. No problems were found.

Yeah, the jerks out there are getting pretty slick with this crap. You are lucky you defeated enough of it to keep it from doing anything else. Some of these things are so insidious that once infected, all you can do is repartition and reformat the hard drive, reload windows, and hope you have a recent backup of all your stuff.

There is better than a fifty fifty chance that you missed more slime, but with some luck, it is not active slime and will simply clutter your drive without doing anything nasty.

Don't EVER click on anything that pops up claiming to have found something, unless you are ABSOLUTELY CERTAIN that the pop up is a legitimate part of software that you yourself installed. You fell for a scam that the real antivirus people generally refer to as "social engineering". The bad guys created a trap that looks legit, but actually entices you to click and give permission to install itself. Similar to all the spam emails claiming to have found problems with your bank account at WaMu. Don't ever click on anything in your browser or your email program unless you KNOW where it came from, and even then, reconsider four times, remembering all the hassle you had to get rid of the stuff this time.

There is one that pops up quite often called something like "AntiVirus2009". Last year it was "AntiVirus2008", and so on for many years in the past. Not only is it a Trojan Horse bit of slimeware that infests you with ads and redirects, but you pay money for it, then after they have your credit card info, suddenly the "customer service" toll free number no longer functions. Even if you call your card provider and stop the charge, it can cause all sorts of problems. And you are still stuck with their crud on your computer, to add insult to injury!A lot of the jerks that create and propagate this scam are in Russia, and many of the former East Bloc Communist countries, and this is not a crime in their countries, as long as they are not defrauding their fellow citizens, eveyone else in the world, especially Americans, are fair game.

Last bit of advice: When these things pop up on your screen, don't let the mouse cursor anywhere near the popup. Just a "mouse-over" can trigger some of them. Clicking on the "X" button in the upper right hand corner often won't kill the window; they've corrupted that too: it acts just like the "OK" button! What you should do to kill the popup is to move the mouse cursor to the bottom of the screen, and "right click" the mouse to bring up the "Task Manager". Under the "Applications" tab, you will see a list of the programs you have running, including your browser, and possibly your email if you run it at the same time, and other things. You want to click once on the offending item to highlight it, then click on the button at the bottom that says "End Task". You might get another legitimate popup asking if you are sure, or warning that all data will be lost, or something similar. THAT popup is OK to click to kill the other crud.

There is one that pops up quite often called something like "AntiVirus2009". Last year it was "AntiVirus2008", and so on for many years in the past. Not only is it a Trojan Horse bit of slimeware that infests you with ads and redirects, but you pay money for it, then after they have your credit card info, suddenly the "customer service" toll free number no longer functions.

That's exactly what I just got rid of. It may have been called "Security 2009" or something like that, but it was supposedly a notice that I needed anti virus software. There was a little striped sheild logo that got installed as a desktop icon. After my computer was done booting up, the virus would take over the desktop displaying a grid of diagonal lines across everything. It wouldn't allow me to run any programs, or access any website, other than theirs, whereupon they wanted my credit card number to supposedly "buy their anti-virus software".

I finally got rid of it just by using the "restore" feature in Accessories->System Tools & restored my computer to an earlier point before the virus was there.

After that, I ran my legit anti virus software twice... once in pre-boot mode, then after a restart & complete boot up, ran another full scan.

Great news guys.... With the Air Hawk, flat balls are no longer a problem!!!

I hope no one is offended by the fact that I posted this System Security dilemma in two places.

I posted it here and in its own new thread.

The reason I did that is so that by having its own thread it may alert someone unaware of the problem. Then I also posted it here because this one is more of a long term reference thread. Whereas the topical thread will most likely at some point sink to the bottom.

Reg, the basic MO is that you "save" a picture from the internet into your computer's picture file. Then, from your Photobucket account, you open up your picture files and "select" the pic you want. This will upload the pic into your Photobucket account. From your Photobucket account, you select the "IMG" option underneath that picture, and copy/paste the code for that picture into your CIH post.

Just an FYI. I normally use Google Chrome now, but it has an issue with this website in that I cannot post anything using these dialogue boxes. No curser appears in the box so I can't write anything. If anyone else experiences this, simply switch over to Internet Explorer or some other browser. With IE it resolves the problem of the dialogue boxes not working.

Forum Admin, any thoughts on what the problem might be with the Chrome Browser?

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